In the original game, the player has the option to side with the villain and unlock a completely unique (and horrifying) ending. Meanwhile, in Fallout 3 the player is given the choice to detonate an active nuclear warhead in the middle of a town. Here is a list of some of the worst choices that players can make in the fallout series.
8 Joining The Master’s Army – Fallout
That’s right, Fallout lets the player forsake their quest for the water chip and straight-up sell out their vault to the Super Mutant Army. There are two ways of going about this. Either the player can surrender to the Lieutenant in Mariposa Military Base, or surrender to the Master when confronting him in his lair under the Boneyard Cathedral.
Doing either of these will immediately end the game and award the player with a cutscene depicting the Super Mutants overrunning and massacring the residents of Vault 13. This isn’t intended to be a canon ending, though; it’s more of a “what-if” scenario.
7 Give a Live Gun to the Wright Children – Fallout 2
In Fallout 2, the player can come across a group of children playing with each other in New Reno. These children belong to the Wright family, and if the player chooses to, they can give these children a loaded pistol to play with. Depending on what dialogue options the player picks when talking with them, this will either result in the children killing their father, Orville, or each other with the pistol.
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That’s right, the player can indirectly cause a group of children to kill each other whilst playing. Most players probably won’t be going out of their way to do this. However, the option is available for those with a more depraved or chaotic disposition.
6 Poisoning the Water Purifier – Fallout 3
Fallout 3 doesn’t let the player officially side with the Enclave like they can with the Institute in Fallout 4. However, they can still do the Enclave’s bidding if they so choose. When talking to President John Henry Eden, he will ask the player to poison Project Purity with a modified version of the FEV II virus, which would result in the deaths of any mutated person who drank from it.
Going along with this plot contributes to obtaining a bad ending, and will lower the player’s Karma level substantially. It will also result in the player dying every time they drink Aqua Pura, due to them having actually been born in the wasteland rather than in a vault, making them a mutant. Oops.
5 Destroying the Brotherhood of Steel – Fallout 3
During the climax of Fallout 3’s Broken Steel DLC, the player is supposed to use the mobile base crawler’s satellite targeting system and redirect the orbital payload onto the base itself, destroying the Enclave in the process. Alternatively, however, the player may choose to target the Citadel in the Capital Wasteland, “just because.”
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Not only will this annihilate all Brotherhood members present in the building — upon arrival via Vertibird, it will result in Sarah Lyons and the other surviving BOS members turning hostile. It’s actually great option for anyone doing an Enclave sleeper agent playthrough.
4 Siding with Father Elijah – Fallout: New Vegas
Much like in the original game, New Vegas gives the player the option to side with an antagonist in its first DLC expansion, Dead Money. It also results in an alternate ending to the expansion that, while thoroughly non-canon, is still interesting nonetheless.
To unlock this ending the player must have recruited Veronica and done her quest. Then, talk to her about her past with Father Elijah and become vilified by the NCR. Completing these prerequisites will unlock special dialogue options that, when picked, will trigger a secret ending in which the Courier and Elijah team up and lay waste to the Mojave.
3 Sabotaging the Bright Follower’s Rockets – Fallout: New Vegas
The Bright Followers are certainly one of the sillier factions in Fallout: New Vegas. For starters, their end goal is to use the REPCONN Test Site’s rockets to fly to “the great beyond” and establish a colony — at least, if the player allows them to. Alternatively, the player can convince Chris Haversam via speech check that he is, in fact, not a Ghoul.
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This prompts him to suggest sabotaging the rockets and killing his former compatriots mid-flight. The deed simply requires a few cherry bombs and a high speech skill, and results in the rockets colliding with each other in a darkly comedic fashion.
2 Joining the Institute – Fallout 4
The reason that joining the Institute could be considered a bad choice is that they are such a comically evil faction for seemingly no reason. Asking them to explain themselves simply results in a “you wouldn’t understand” type of response.
This is somewhat hilarious when their actions consist of populating the wasteland with Super Mutants, killing and replacing random Commonwealth inhabitants with synths, and creating a whole group of beings that they’ve seen fit to enslave. There’s not much they do that can be considered strictly good for the wasteland. Joining them implies that the player is A-OK with this fact; otherwise, they’d join one of the other factions that oppose them.
1 Causing Mama Murphy to Overdose – Fallout 4
Mama Murphy isn’t exactly the most loved character in the Fallout universe. Even so, it’s quite twisted for players to feed her addictions for their own benefit until she dies of an overdose.
It seems that Mama Murphy has some psychic powers, like other Fallout characters. However, very much unlike those characters, hers are affected by the drugs she’s taken. This presents a dilemma for the player: either keep her clean and sacrifice the opportunity to utilize her powers, or load her up with Jet, Psycho and whatever else in order to take advantage of her abilities in the quest to find Shaun. Doing the latter too many times will eventually kill her via overdose.
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